Talk Like a Beat

Rachel Hurn
is an intern for The Millions. She was born in Los Angeles and is currently earning her MFA in Creative Nonfiction at The New School. Her work can be found at thenewyorker.com and at her blog, rachelhurn.blogspot.com. Follow Rachel on Twitter @rachelmariehurn.

Kim Addonizio‘s latest collection of short stories, The Palace of Illusions, is due out this month. Here is a sneak peek, the story, “Another Breakup Song,” featuring a distinctly Raymond Carver-esque vibe.

Fans of the French Oulipo movement will know about A Void, the Georges Perec novel written entirely without the use of the letter “e.” What very few readers of any kind know, however, is that in 1939, thirty years before Perec’s novel was published, Ernest Vincent Wright wrote a book in English, Gadsby, that hewed to these same constraints. At The Atlantic, Nikhil Sonnadinvestigates how this experiment plays out in the book.